YouTube to launch high-quality video

16 Nov 2007

It seems as if Google is firing on all cylinders recently. Not content with developing OpenSocial to compete with Facebook and Android to get a big share of the mobile web, it also plans on improving the quality of YouTube transmission.

At the NewTeeVee online videoconference held yesterday in San Francisco, YouTube was among the many new and old media companies intent on talking about their version of the next generation of television, or TV 2.0.

While YouTube has previously been engaged with fighting off court cases by Viacom and developing copyright content filtering technology, its main focus at the conference was on bringing YouTube to the next level: high-quality streaming video content.

YouTube co-founder Steve Chen said the new high-quality service is expected to be available for all within three months, but said it will not be able to improve the quality of pre-existing bad-quality videos such as those uploaded from camera phones.

He added that previously YouTube’s goal has been to make a huge library of video content available to the masses, but that now it is concentrating on new technology that scans the connection speed of the user and delivers high-quality content if the connection is speedy enough.

Chen also mentioned that the launch of YouTube in Japan had got the company thinking about the possibility of videos on mobile handset.

YouTube has already gone a ways towards the mobile route with specific applications for both the iPod Touch and iPhone.